Movie reinforces terrible theme

January 25, 2013

Here's my review of "Zero Dark Thirty," the Oscar-nominated film about the tracking and assassination of Osama Bin Laden. It's a jingoistic bucket of vomit that could have come straight from the torture-filled sexual fantasies of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

I am so tired of this self-pitying narrative about the World Trade Center attacks that provides no context for why anyone might be violently angry with the United States. There's no mention, for instance, of the half of a million children who died in Iraq in the 1990s as a result of U.S. sanctions. There's no mention of how, when then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright was confronted with these reports, she said, "We think the price is worth it." I'm so sick of the sanctimonious talk, which is repeated over and over in "Zero Dark Thirty," about the couple of thousand Americans who were killed on 9/11 when there is no mention of the infinitely greater terrorism our country unleashes on the rest of the world. This selective outrage can only be explained by a toxic mix of racism, nationalism and classism.

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